When Apple introduced the original iPhone to the world on January 9, 2007, the IT industry responded with an intimate appreciation for a company that was willing to unveil a new paradigm for interfacing with a mobile phone. Without a previous track record in the mobile industry or any previous smartphone history for analysts to lean their heavy shoulders on, Apple expressed confidence in its new “Internet communicator” device that doubled as a widescreen iPod, and it gratefully invited the massive consumer electronics industry into the world of gesture-based multitouch.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs said back then. Featuring a new input technology at the time called “capacitive multitouch” and a single physical button for OS navigation, the phone was destined to start a paradigm shift in the smartphone computing space. But little did the rest of the market know how astonishingly successful the platform would be with mainstream consumers, business professionals and Apple fans all across the globe.

In the first 186 days since release, the original iPhone sold a grand total of 3,704,000 units in the United States by December 30, 2007, averaging to roughly 12,163 iPhones per day. Jobs made it clear during his MacWorld 2008 keynote that his revolutionary device topped smartphone sales by Palm, Nokia and Motorola combined, right out of the gate. For a device that garnered over 20 percent of all US smartphone sales after being on the market for less than a year, it was certainly doing well for itself.

Three years have come and gone since Apple first entered the smartphone business, and with each successive launch of a new iPhone iteration it has seen even higher revenue margins backed by an ever-growing user base. Where its first-generation model released in June 2007 and was available in six different countries respectively, the iPhone 3G released in June 2008 and was available to 70 different countries. As the device made a global impact and spread as a catalyst for the booming smartphone market at the time, Apple’s revenues continued to soar sky high throughout the end of the previous decade, even in the midst of the worst economic depression the world has seen in ages.

Apple has certainly not received a consistent red carpet of success from the iPhone’s original debut, however. Since the device was first released to market over three years ago, a lot has changed at the secretive company’s headquarters behind closed doors. In January 2009, Steve Jobs took a leave of absence due to health reasons that were “more complex” than he had first thought. In addition, some of the company’s key people, including many from PR to engineering staff and ex-hardware chief, left to join forces with Palm for a chance to develop a brand new smartphone platform – but of course, Apple has since hired Rich Dellinger, Palm’s lead engineer and visual designer to take lead as senior designer of user interface technologies.

Let’s not forget the companies who laid the groundwork to bring mobile “app stores” and applications to cell phones in the first place. Back in 2001, Qualcomm created the BREW Mobile Platform, an open solution for wireless applications development. It encouraged independent developers to write apps for mobile devices, and created a commerce engine for wireless carriers to sell apps to customers with a payment model catered in favor of developers. But it simply wasn’t strong enough to compete with Apple when the iPhone 3G roared into the market in 2008 with a native App Store, leaving every other smartphone manufacturer in the dust. In a nutshell, the consumer electronics industry and software vendors are now more attuned than ever to the idea of having a centralized store for purchasing applications. Even Microsoft has plans to bring its own app store to the Windows desktop environment with Windows 8, and only time will tell if Apple decides to counteract with an extension of its mobile App Store for the Mac platform.

Apple's announcement of passing the 500 million mark on January 16, 2009

By the time Apple had released the iPhone 3GS on June 19, 2009, the App Store was boasting over 50,000 available applications to choose from. To size up the competition, Android held a mere 4,900, Nokia held 1,088, RIM held 1,030 and Palm held 18 respectively (According to Apple.) Even its mobile Safari browser was boasting 65 percent of all worldwide smartphone users in June 2009 and continues to hold the dominant market position through summer 2010.

Apple’s mobile platform and curated App Store have certainly held a successful journey thus far, but whether they can continue to expand with a fourth iPhone revision for another year remains to be seen. Nevertheless, we plan to dive into what merges the hardware and software details of the company’s latest smartphone iteration into a competitive smartphone to determine whether Apple stands a chance against its contenders.

Introducing the iPhone 4 – “This changes everything. Again.”

On Thursday, June 24, 2010, Apple launched the iPhone 4, the fourth hardware iteration in its successful smartphone line. Not coincidentally, this was the third time we found ourselves waiting overnight in a continually expanding line outside our local Apple Store in Southern California to be part of the new hardware release. But this particular launch was different in comparison to the past two releases, given that Steve Jobs had announced during WWDC that Apple “will take the biggest leap since the original iPhone” in 2010. While no one at the time knew with certainty what aspects of the iPhone platform Jobs was pertaining to, many came to believe that he was referring to the iPhone 4’s hardware design and new capabilities. On the other hand, some suggested that the introduction of iOS 4 and its multitasking functionality would be the great emphasis for this year. While either of these perspectives may hold some truth to what Jobs had actually implied, we believe this “biggest leap since the original iPhone” refers to a harmonious combination of the device’s new hardware capabilities, processing speed and battery life working in synchronicity with the new software improvements that iOS 4 has to offer.

Regardless of opinion and perspective, Steve Jobs himself went on stage and made the announcement, and a bunch of folks got incredibly excited over the new phone. As a result, pre-orders skyrocketed through the roof, subsequently causing a catastrophic server meltdown and disastrous privacy breach for AT&T. Yet in spite of all this, Apple still mustered up the courage to give the device an official motto that arrogantly defies the face of PR failure and hopes to set the record straight: “This changes everything. Again.”

Retina Display – The facts and the friction

From the press shots released during WWDC, it is immediately noticeable that the physical dimensions of the screen have not changed from previous iterations of the hardware. The iPhone 4 features the same 3.5-inch display as its predecessors, but it manages to pack four times the amount of pixels into the same physical space. Right out of the box, the device sports the highest smartphone display resolution in Q2 2010 with a whopping 960x640 pixels at 326ppi (pixels-per-inch) with an 800:1 contrast ratio. Apple took the liberty of dubbing this design-win the Retina Display, claiming that the “ultra-resolution” of the screen essentially tops what is perceivable by the human eye.

iPhone 3GS (480x320) versus iPhone 4 Retina Display (960x640)

But of course, the marketing bluff has not gone without a fair counterargument against Apple’s technology claims. Wired Magazine spoke to Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University, who disagreed with Apple’s suggestion that the Retina Display exceeded the “300 pixels-per-inch” quoted as the limit for an average eye. Although he agreed that the iPhone 4’s display is “likely the best on the market,” he explained that it was inaccurate to measure the resolution of the eye in terms of pixels, because the eye actually has an angular resolution of 50 degrees per cycle.

In other words, to make an accurate comparison between the resolution limit of the human eye and pixels on a screen, the angular resolution needs to be converted into linear resolution. After calculating the conversions, Soneira concluded that a more accurate “retina display” would have a pixel resolution of 477ppi at 12 inches. “The marketing puffery is now in control,” Soneira said. “Everything that’s being said now is just this superamplified imaginary nonsense, and the only way to get people’s attention now is making more outlandish statements.

“[Market puffery] hurts companies that make good products, like Apple, because they can’t really put the specs out because everybody is lying,” Soneira explained. If you have the world’s greatest display and we launched it and put down the real scientific numbers, we’d go bankrupt because our numbers look like the worst display being made.”

Physical Dimensions, Aesthetic Changes

The iPhone 4 is also 25 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, measuring in at a mere 0.37 inches thick. In fact, during his WWDC 2010 keynote, Steve Jobs claimed it is currently “the thinnest smartphone on the planet. Based on what the mobile industry has revealed thus far in Q2 2010, we can verify that this statement does in fact hold true. The device no longer features the same “fat” feeling from a curved backside on the iPhone 3GS in 2009 and the iPhone 3G in 2008. For comparison’s sake, the HTC EVO 4G measures 0.47 inches thick, while the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G both measure 0.48 inches thick respectively.

Apple was able to redesign the frame of the device to keep it at a very slim 9.3mm thickness. The front and the back of the iPhone 4 are both made out of two pieces of smooth, strengthened glass. Thanks to its recent teardown, iFixIt believes the material is Corning Gorilla Glass, known for its incredibly strong durability, lightweight design and scratch-resistant chemical strengthening. On the negative side, Apple decided to design the glass surfaces on the iPhone 4 to protrude beyond the stainless steel band that wraps around the phone. As AnandTech’s Brian Klug and Anand Shimpi put it, many users now have the right to feel deathly afraid of dropping and shattering the device. But of course, we would never advocate doing something like Tom Dickson from BlendTec proudly demonstrates every year when a new iPhone is launched.

After the launch event on the morning of June 24th, were fortunate enough to have an appointment set up with the guys at Fusion of Ideas in Irvine, California to have an iPhone 4 StealthArmor shield professionally installed on our device. Serving as better device protection solution than the highly popularized InvisibleShield by Zagg, the company's StealthArmor is fabricated out of industrial grade material originally developed to protect racecar exteriors from flying asphalt while driving at high speeds. The clear shield is designed with nano-fusion technology that offers completely transparent optics - a must have for the iPhone 4 Retina Display - and is guaranteed to protect any mobile device from scratches. Interestingly enough, the full body shield also comes with custom corner and bezel protection strips that serve as an insulation layer between the iPhone 4's external antenna and the user's palm. When AnandTech did an extensive review of the iPhone 4 antenna degradation issues last week, the authors mentioned that Apple should have applied an insulative coating atop the stainless steel bezel, or perhaps even diamond vapor deposition. But now that the marketplace is fully aware of Apple's imprecise engineering imperfections (more on that in Part 2 of this review), mobile device customization and protection companies like Fusion of Ideas have responded to consumer demand with remedies that could perhaps be capable of holding a steady cellular signal while placing a call. But we will address whether or not this theory holds true in a later story.

As far as weight is concerned, all iPhones to date measure in at relatively the same weight, but the density and compactness of the new iPhone 4 hardware can have a subjective variance to it that differs between users. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS both weigh in at 4.8 ounces (135 grams), while the iPhone 3G weighs in at 4.7 ounces (133 grams). In comparison, the HTC Incredible weighs 4.6 ounces (130 grams), the new Motorola Droid X comes in at 5.47 ounces (155 grams), and the HTC EVO 4G comes in at 6 ounces (170 grams). To us, the iPhone 4 feels like it packs more hardware into a smaller surface area and has a noticeably denser feeling than the iPhone 3GS. This is probably due to the removal of the backside curvature being replaced by a rectangular design aesthetic that reminds us of a Gameboy Advance SP when held in the palms.

Coming Up

In the second half of our review, we will address the iPhone 4's antenna design and the controversial reception issue, Apple's new camera sensors, the dynamically clocked A4 processor, memory and internal architecture changes, iOS 4 and overall market acceptance rates so far since launch day.

Lancool is a relatively new name on the computer case market, but if you think they can’t deliver – you’re in for a big surprise. Lancool is actually a subsidiary of the company that needs no introduction – Lian Li. However, unlike Lian-Li, who make their cases of aluminum, Lancool makes their cases from steel, which at the same time pushes the weight up and pricing down.

Today, we’ll look at PC-K62R Red Dragon, which is somewhat of a new and improved version of Dragonlord case, this time with red interior.

As you can already see, PC-K62R Red Dragon resembles some much more expensive high-end cases.

Packaging

Red Dragon comes in a nice black box that features many pictures and details detailing the case. It’s not too large and you can easily carry it. The case weighs in at 9.55kg and our model is PC-K62R.

Below the large picture on the front of the box is the series of smaller ones, which detail some more specific points that make this case worth your while.

The side shows two smaller pictures which show the two available versions of this case – the one with a side-window and the one without.

Lancool secured the case with Styrofoam and wrapped the case in nylon, meaning the package can take a beating and your case will still be delivered in mint condition.

With the case you’ll get a fan controller, PSU fastening mechanism, 3 types of screws, an MB-warning speaker (buzzer), two plastic cable brackets, one 3-pin Molex adapter, self-adhesive rubber for mounting HDDs and an installation manual.

First look at Red DragonPC K62R Red Dragon’s looks isn’t the only selling point for Lancool’s case – there are many more surprises within the case.

There’s plenty of room in the red-colored interior. Lancool left a lot of holes in the panel that should make cable management and swaping CPU coolers a breeze, and there’s plenty of space for the HDD and optical devices as well.

The case is as tough as it gets – stainless steel does that. In this case, the steel isn’t brushed but a bit rough like a fine sandpaper.

Red Dragon is 49.6cm high, 21.4cm wide and 49.8cm long. The case comes with rubber feet that help with lessening vibration noise.

The front panel is closed with a two-layer wire mesh, which allows for air-intake without inviting dust in. Two-layer mesh is placed on most openings in the case and the inside layer, which is a finer mesh, can easily be removed and cleaned.

The upper part of the front panel will take up to ___ 5.25’’ optical devices, whereas the lower part is reserved for the 140mm (1000rpm) fan with a red LED lamp. The fan isn’t visible until the LED lamp lights up, and the fan draws in fresh air for HDDs/SSDs as well as the rest of components within the case.

On the top of the case you’ll find ON/OFF keys, 2xUSB ports, microphone and headphone jacks and Lancool’s logo. The rear part of the top panel is reserved for air-outlets. The case comes with two preinstalled 140mm fans.

The top panel can be taken off, but not before the front panel is removed. This “process” however, shouldn’t take more than 20 seconds.

Side panels are removed by a tug backwards, which isn’t easy and it takes some force, but once in place - side panels are stable and won’t vibrate. The screws that hold the side-panels in place don’t need tools to operate – you can unscrew them by hand.

The standard version of PC-G62R case comes with two metal side-panels, but you can order the windowed version and mount it with no trouble. We must admit that Red Dragon looks much better with the window on the side as the red interior really makes for a nice view.

As you can see from the following picture, there are one vertical and 8 standard expansion slots. You’ll find a 120mm (1500rpm) fan with a red LED lamp, so no lack of redness here.

Lancool seems to have thought about everything and there are two holes for external water cooling.

PSU is mounted on the bottom. Thanks to the rubber feet, the case is about 1cm from the floor, which helps the power supply get air.

The wire mesh is in action here as well, preventing dust from entering the case. Like the rest of them, it can be taken off and cleaned.

The insides

Lancool PC K62R Red Dragon case’s insides are painted red, which makes this a treat for your eyes when the side panel has a window on it. Good thing about this case is that HDD trays are slid outwards, so there’s no need for removing the graphics card every time you switch disks. The case supports microATX and ATX motherboards.

If you’ve no experience in mounting motherboards, don’t worry as Lancool marked the appropriate holes for ATX and microATX motherboards.

If you look at the motherboard tray, you’ll notice that it has a couple of larger holes. The largest one is behind the CPU, intended for large coolers which require back-panels. This means that you won’t have to take the motherboard out of the case in case you need to switch CPU coolers. The rest of the holes are for easier cable management, behind the motherboard where they’ll keep out of sight and out of the airflow.

HDD trays won’t get in the way of motherboard components, but you’ll have to take the right side panel off if you want to connect or disconnect your HDD. If you have one or two HDD, you can pull the trays outwards and then disconnect the cables, but if there are more HDDs, you won’t be able to. The reason is that the cable is not long enough and will tug on the rest of the trays. Red dragon will take up to 3.5’’ HDDs.

The optical drive locking system comes with relatively short “nails” that enter holes meant for screws, meaning that a slighter tug or push of an optical drive results in the drive moving. Only the first two out of five 5.25’’ slots come with a toolless system that speeds up the installation, whereas the rest is old fashioned – screws and some more screws.

Four 140mm (1000RPM) and one 120mm fan (1500RPM) are in charge of the airflow. If you haven’t been paying attention, one 140mm is on the front panel and another two are on the upper panel. The smaller 120mm fan (1500RPM) is on the back panel and it, just like the front fan, comes with a red LED lamp.

Expansion slots on this case use a special mechanism that makes our job much easier, and we’ve already seen it on some of Lian-Li’s cases.

Installation and testing

We mounted the PSU and fastened it with Lian-Li’s strange L-shaped bracket. We must admit that this mechanism is pretty simple and practical, but so are four screws.

The fans are quiet but Lian-Li’s Fan Speed Controller is there in case you need to control them manually.

Mounting HDDs is not time-consuming, but it does require you to take the side panel off in order to connect the cables.

Our test CPU cooler was Gelid Tranquillo, which we’ve so far used in Cooler Master’s HAF 922. The nice in-case airflow allowed for stable operation of our processor, which was overclocked to 3.3GHz.

After half an hour of Prime 95 torture, the temperature within the case was at 55°C, which is almost identical to HAF 922’s results. The fans ran at maximum RPM throughout our tests yet they were never too loud.

Lancool PC K62R Red Dragon didn’t fail us and our test only confirmed why this case already has a good reputation.

Conclusion

Although at a glance it might seem as just another standard case, Lancool’s PC K62R Red Dragon case hides much of what graces it. Naturally, knowing Lian-Li’s designs this is not a surprise. Within you’ll find all the space you need, openings for CPU coolers and cable management, rubber pucks to prevent HDD vibration and 4 silent fans.

Windowed Plexiglas panels, which can be purchased for this case, make a relatively uninspiring black box really come to life and the red interior coupled with red LED lamps really makes for a nice view. You can get Lancool K62 Midi-Tower - Red Dragon Window Edition for about 90 euro, here.

Since we’re talking about cost-down versions of Lian-Li cases, some things had to suffer, so you might find some details that seem as if they lack finishing touches. We’re mostly talking about the inside of the case, where upon closer look you’ll find that HDD brackets seem a little cheapish or that the rubber feet leave marks on the floor.

Red Dragon is a pretty functional case which deserves all plaudits, but things aren’t as bright price-wise. The case goes for €102, which in this times isn’t really what we’d call affordable nor nice bang-per-buck deal.

If however you don’t have monetary issues, like red color and ultimately choose to purchase it, we assure you that you won’t have any sleepless nights over what the case offers.

Special thanks to CaseKing, the company that kindly provided our today’s test sample.

Today we'll take a look at the GTX 460, a card based on the new GF104 graphics chip, rather than the GF100 that was featured on the current crop of available Fermi cards. GF104 is the second generation Fermi, which should save Nvidia's hide and help it reclaim the graphics throne. That Nvidia is serious in its intentions is further backed by the fact that all Nvidia's partners have already ordered the GF104 and already have their specially designed cards in their respective offers. All that's left is hope that GTX 460 will sell like ice-cream in the summer time, but we should know that soon enough.

Judging by what we've heard, the GF104 should be a much better overclocker than the GF100, but naturally - we won't take anyone's word for it. Nvidia initially planned to launch the GTX 460 by the end of June, but the company pushed it back to 12th of July. The cards are already available in pretty much any flavor you prefer – reference and custom PCB designed, reference and custom cooled, and reference clocked and overclocked cards are all there for the taking. There are also Geforce GTX 460 cards based on the same GF104 chip, with the difference in memory and bandwidth. The core runs at 675MHz, shaders (CUDA cores) at 1350MHz and the memory at 3600MHz (effectively).

We’ll refer to the GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 as the faster one, since it’s memory bus is a 256-bit one, whereas the “slower” card comes with 768MB of GDDR5 memory on a 192-bit bus. The memory subsystem on the GTX 460 768MB card is made of three 64-bit memory controllers (192-bit), whereas the GTX 460 1024MB comes with four 64-bit memory controllers (256-bit).

The GTX 460’s graphics processor comes with 336 CUDA cores and 56 texture units at its disposal. Now, one SM (streaming multiprocessor x8) comes with 48 CUDA cores, whereas the GF100’s SM chips packed 32. The GTX 460 has two warp schedulers and four dispatch units per SM. Warp size is 32 threads, like GF100. GF104 also supports 48 warps per/SM similar to GF100. Nvidia can issue a mix of instructions in GF104. Two instructions can be dispatched per warp (versus one in GF100), for a total of four instructions dispatched per scheduler clock (which runs at ½ speed of processor clock) per SM.

The GTX 460 has seven execution clusters running on the core clock. Up to four instructions can be issued to any of the seven clusters provided that cluster is not already busy processing an earlier warp. FP and INT datapaths also have separate dispatch resources to support, for example, issuing three FP plus one INT instruction per scheduler clock.

GTX 460 doesn’t have standard HDMI, but rather mini-HDMI. However, Nvidia madu sure to include advanced audio support for HDMI, including bitstreaming support for Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master audio, all via HDMI.

Up until now, the GTX 465 was the only sub-€300 Nvidia’s DirectX 11 card (available for about €260), but Nvidia’s new offer will be much more appealing to those with less than mile-deep pockets. In fact, the card will be available from €200 for the 768MB model or €230 for the 1024MB one.

Nvidia doesn’t plan on stopping there though as it has two other affordable chips in the plans – GF106 and GF108, which will be the final DirectX 11 touch for the back-to-school period. Notebook makers are also excited about GF104 and its offshoots, as the chip has 25% lower TDP compared to the GF100 and together with Optimus, GF104 could be a pretty decent chip for mainstream and performance mobile markets.

Many partners already have custom-designed and overclocked cards, with some partners like Gainward offering as many as 4 different GTX 460 flavors. What follows are 13 cards from already famous Nvidia partners, with one perhaps familiar face missing - BFG. You might recall that the company has halted its Nvidia business but we can't help but wonder whether they'll jump back on Nvidia trains if Nvidia's future offerings prove they're better than the GF100.

Asus

ENGTX460_DirectCU_TOP_2DI_768MD5_45Angel

ENGTX460-2DI-768MD5_3D_L

Axle

AX-GTX460/768D5P2D2I

Elitegroup

NBGTX460-1GPI-F

768-P3-1360-TR

EVGA

01G-P3-1371-TR

768-P3-1360-TR

Gainward

GW1145_GTX460_HDD_768MB

GW1176_GTX460 GLH_HDD_768MB

GW1190_GTX460 GS_HDD_1024MB

GW1213_GTX460 GLH_HDD_1024MB

Galaxy

GALAXY-GTX460_768M-GC

GALAXY-GTX460_768MB_SUPER-OC

GALAXY-GTX460_1GB-GC

GALAXY-GTX460_1GB_SUPER-OC

Gigabyte

GV-N460OC-768

GV-N460OC-1G

Inno3D

gtx460_768M

Jetway

Jetway GTX 460

MSI

N460GTX-CYCLONE-1GD5(G57-V100699)

N460GTX-CYCLONE-768D5-OC(G57-V100698)

Palit

Palit_GTX460_768M

Palit_GTX460-SONIC

Palit_GTX460_SONIC_PLATINUM_1GB

Poin Of View

GTX460-768MB-VGA-460-A1-768

Sparkle

GTX460_768MB

GTX460_1024MB

Zotac

ZOTAC_GF_GTX460_768MB

ZOTAC_GF_GTX460_1GB

Apart from the clocks, EVGA didn't change a thing on the GTX 460. So, the GTX 460 is a dual-slot card measuring 210mm in length (8.25in), 111.15mm in width (4.376in) and weighing in at 2lbs.

EVGA Superclocked’s GPU runs at 763MHz, compared to the reference 675MHz. The card’s memory bandwidth is at 92.1GB/s, whereas the reference card’s bandwidth is at 86.4GB/s.

The cooler comes with a copper-base, two heatpipes and a large aluminum heat-dissipating surface. The fan is placed in the center and the plastic hood is designed with maximum air supply to the fan in mind.

The card is powered via two 6-pin power connectors.

With its GTX 460 cards, EVGA provides an HDMI cable with mini-HDMI connector, which is a nice gesture as most users (especially non-Nvidians) aren’t familiar with mini-HDMI. For overclocking and monitoring, we’d recommend EVGA’s Precision utility which is free and can be downloaded from EVGA’s site.

With its GTX 460 cards, EVGA provides an HDMI cable with mini-HDMI connector, which is a nice gesture as most users (especially non-Nvidians) aren’t familiar with mini-HDMI. For overclocking and monitoring, we’d recommend EVGA’s Precision utility which is free and can be downloaded from EVGA’s site.

EVGA’s GTX 460 768 MB Superclocked outruns both the GTX 465 768 MB and HD 5830 in Vantage tests. We see that overclocking gave EVGA Superclocked a helping hand and it beats the HD 5830 by more than 11%.

At 1920x1200 in Dirt 2, EVGA Superclocked outruns the HD 5830 by about 30% and the GTX 465 by more than 10%.

Metro 2033 confirms that EVGA GTX 460 767MB Superclocked is one mean machine that even the GTX 465 can’t beat. Here we see results equal to those scored by the GTX 465, and the HD 5830 is slower by about 4.2% at high settings.

In the first Metro 2033 test, we made it easier on the cards by turning Advanced DOF (depth of field) in DirectX 11 settings. Tesselation is on in both tests with the difference being in general settings – the first test is done at Normal settings and the second at High. As you can see, when the complexity of effects is lowered, we get a playable framerate with all our tested cards.

EVGA GTX 460 768MB Superclocked makes a nice headstart by beating the HD 5830 by 18% (with antialiasing), but the HD 5830 takes over after we turned antialiasing on. GTX 460 Superclocked is once again on par with the GTX 465.

FurMark results didn’t come as a surprise as EVGA GTX 460 768MB Superclocked, thanks to its clocks, beats the HD 5830 and outruns or runs on par with the GTX 465 in most of our tests.

Unigine Heaven is a DirectX 11 test which puts an emphasis on tessellation and leaves it up to the user to define the level of tessellation. We chose Normal mode which is less stressful than the Extreme mode, but mid-range cards still have difficulties in completing the tests.

Geforce GTX 460 will surely be a hit with overclockers. So far, Fermi cards haven’t quite excelled in overclocking and it seems that the slower the card – the better it overclocks. Up ‘till now, the GTX 465 (GF100) was the only model which managed to hit 800MHz with air cooling. GF104 based cards, on the other hand, show some serious promise and the fact that many partners had overclocked cards on day one speaks for itself. In fact, some of the aforementioned cards run at 800MHz, which is 150MHz higher than reference.

EVGA GTX 460 Superclocked – overclocking with the help of Precision utility

EVGA GTX 460 Superclocked’s reference clocks are 763MHz for the GPU (shaders run at twice the speed) and the memory at 3800MHz (effectively). GTX 460 Superclocked is already available on the market and comes clocked 88MHz higher than on the reference GTX 460, which is a respectable factory overclock.

We had help from EVGA’s Precision v1.9.5 in our overclocking, and this latest version of the utility supports GTX 460. Using this small and simple utility makes monitoring and setting fan speed a breeze.

The latest, v1.9.5 utility also displays fan tachometer, where we find that minimum RPM is 1500 RPM or 40% RPM, whereas the maximum RPM is at 2900 RPM or 70% RPM. EVGA Precision no longer uses static slider limits calibration and adjusts the limits dynamically when some external factors affect it (e.g. when minimum fan speed is limited by NVIDIA driver), which is the reason why we couldn’t push the fan above 70% RPM.

Minimum temperature on the GTX 460 Superclocked was 30°C and maximum temperature hit 66°C with AUTO fan regulation. These are excellent results, and are even more impressive considering that the cooler is almost inaudible in 3D.

We had to increase fan RPM for our overclocking so we set it to 70% RPM, where temperatures hit about 59°C. This proves that the GTX 460’s cooling packs enough potential to cool the card in pretty much any scenario.

870MHz for the GPU and 4160MHz (effectively) are excellent results, and Nvidia finally has an affordable card that has serious overclocking potential.

So, Nvidia finally launched its new graphics card dubbed the GTX 460 and aimed it at the more price-aware market segment. GTX 460 cards are available for less than €200 for the 768MB GDDR5 model whereas the 1024MB GDDR5 models are priced around the €230 mark.

The GTX 460 is currently Nvidia’s most affordable DirectX 11 card with good performance, quiet cooling and a great overclocking potential. The card will easily go over 800MHz reaching and hitting as high as 850MHz is no problem. Saying this, lower-budget gamers will love this card because it’s capable of gaming at 1920x1200 even without overclocking. The only downside to this card is the competition – AMD’s HD 5830 sells at about €170 and offers similar gaming performance.

EVGA GTX 460 Superclocked 768MB GDDR5 is a factory overclocked card where the GPU runs at 763MHz, CUDA cores at 1526MHz and the memory at 3800MHz (effectively). Apart from the 13% factory GPU overclock, we managed to push the card to 870MHz (reference clock is 675MHz), which is a 29% overclock – not too shabby, we’d say.

Although EVGA’s GTX 460 Superclocked card uses reference cooling, we must admit that for once we didn’t wish for non-reference cooling solution – this is one of the best reference solutions we’ve seen. Operating temperatures hit only 66°C, where the cooler remained really quiet throughout our testing. Idle consumption is low and it doesn’t get much higher in 3D either, so the EVGA GTX 460 will be a great card for those who really like to take control of their rig’s consumption.

EVGA currently offers four cards: 768MB standard clocked for €209.90, 768MB Superclocked for €225, 1GB standard clocked for €239 and the 1GB Superclocked for €255. Although EVGA’s prices are higher than the most affordable GTX 460 cards, excellent customer support and constant updates on various graphics card related tools are reasons enough to consider paying a bit extra. Furthermore, our today’s card managed to outrun the much pricier Geforce GTX 465 on couple of occasions, which really drives our point even further.

If you’re an Nvidian, and you’ve been waiting on Geforce DirectX 11 gaming card price-cuts – then today is your day. EVGA GTX 460 Superclocked offers excellent overclocking potential without stressing your cooler and adding noise, but you won’t make a mistake if you choose the reference model either, as it too can easily be overclocked to at least 800MHz.

Today we will use two HD 5670 1GB in CrossFire to hound a single GTX 460 768MB. We found this comparison could be interesting because at the moment you can get one GTX 460 768MB for the price of two HD 5670 1GB cards. Before we go further to the results page please note that not each HD 5670 is CrossFire ready. The card you want use for doubling the performance must have a CrossFire bridge on the PCB, and most of them out there do not have it. We got lucky as the cards we got from XFX and Sapphire have the aforementioned bridge.

Using HD 5670 cards without the CrossFire bridge you will result in the following message:

If the setup is done right than you will be advised to enable CrossFire for enhanced performance.

We don't want to wait and leave the best for last, as the best HD 5670 1GB CrossFireX score is here. The best Nvidia card is defeated in Aliens Vs Predator game at 1920x1200 without antialiasing, but note that this is only case where GTX 460 is not better.

Conclusion

The Geforce GTX 460 is realy great card and it's definitely worth buying. For those with one HD 5670 1GB card, adding another HD 5670 1GB could be the solution for more performance on a budget. However, this only applies in case you are the lucky owner of an HD 5670 with CrossFire connector. For HTCP owners, playing games on high resolutions is not the most important thing. Until Nvidia comes out with GF106 and GF108 cards, the HD 5600 series and other HD 5000 parts will continue to dominate the low-end market.

We've already written about Thermalright's HR-02 CPU cooling, one of the pretty hefty solutions claiming to pack enough punch to passively cool a Core i7. As sceptical as we are, we've had our doubts as well, but Thermalright has proven to be right on the money. In fact, semi-passive operation will help the HR-02 in cooling a Core i7 930 at 2.8GHz and even a Core i7 965 Extreme at 3.2GHz.

HR-02 has a large dissipation surface making it easy for the passive cooler to release heat. Like any other passive cooling solution, HR-02 too requires at least some basic airflow within the case. HR-02 performance will naturally be improved if you strap it with a fan, but since the HR-02 was designed to passively cool Core i7 CPUs at reference voltages and clocks, a decent airflow within the case will do the trick.

Thanks to the design, HR-02’s heatsink is moved towards the spots where case fans are usually placed. Thermalright did a pretty good job with this move as it makes the case and the accompanying fans work in its favor and improves performance in the so called semi-passive operation.

As you can see from the pictures, there are six nickel plated heatpipes (6mm in diameter) branching out both ways from the copper base. The cooler’s base isn’t dead center below the heatsink as on most CPU coolers. The heatsink is somewhat leaning towards the fan on the back panel or, if you turn the cooler by 90 degrees, towards the top fan.

The following picture shows the HR-02 turned towards the back panel fan. We strapped our HR-02 with a TR-TY1-140mm fan so as to get the push-pull effect. If you’re looking to overclock your CPU, adding one or two silent (12cm or 14cm) fans on the HR-02 will get you additional cooling without introducing unwanted noise.

You’ll notice many openings in the heatsink, which helps prevent hot air pockets, improves airflow and speeds up the dissipation process.

A careful observer will notice a big hole on the top of the heatsink and it stretches all the way to the bottom. The reason is the screw located below the heatsink and Thermalright bundled an appropriate screwdriver – a really nice touch indeed.

HR-02 measures 110 x 140 x 160 (L x W x H) and weighs in at 860 grams (without the fan and bracket system). The cooler is a giant indeed and to paint a picture of just how big it is, here’s a comparison to a single 2.5 inch SSD disk.

The bracket system with pressure adding mechanism (40~70lbs) is an interesting feature, but it didn't help us much in practice. The pressure system was made to make HR-02 cooler better fitted with different CPU surfaces. Generally speaking, you do not want to apply an excessive amount of pressure onto the processor as it might result in damaging it.

Our testing reveals that applying almost maximum pressure results in 1°C lower temperature on our Core i7 930 but tightening the screw we couldn’t shake the feeling that we’ll crush the CPU. Thermalright says that the ideal pressure would be half screw in, or just a little 1/4 in on the Core i7, whereas our advice would be to tighten it until you feel resistance.

Thermalright currently has a mounting mechanism that works only with Intel sockets 775/1156/1366, which leaves AMD out of the picture. The company did, however, announce it’s working on an AMD socket mounting mechanism.

HR-02 doesn’t come with a provided fan but Thermalright included two brackets – one for a 12cm and one for a 14cm fan, so you can mount two fans. We ended up using the 12cm fan bracket when we were mounting a second 14cm fan, but naturally this is not advisable as the fan won’t be held properly.

You’ll also find a long screwdriver, installation manual, Chill Factor3 thermal paste and anti-vibration elements with sticky tape for one fan.

Setting the HR-02 up is pretty simple, and the mounting procedure is pretty much the same for all supported Intel sockets as the backplate and the rest of the parts are universal.

The motherboard on the picture is Elitegroup’s X58B-A. Mounting the HR-02 on it was a breeze and as Thermalright says, HR-02 is compatible with most motherboards.

The following picture clearly shows that the cooler’s heatsink is nudged forwards, in order to boost efficiency by utilizing the rear panel fan.

Thermalright HR-02’s motherboards compatibility list includes many motherboards currently on the market, and you can check out the list here. We’d however advise you to take the list with a grain of salt as we managed to mount the HR-02 on an EVGA X58 FTW3 with ease, despite the fact that the motherboard was listed as incompatible.

EVGA Classified 4-Way SLI motherboard is listed as compatible but we’d rather put it as partially-compatible. The reason for this is that the chipset’s large heatsink will make you turn the HR-02 towards the top panel fan.

EVGA Classified 4-Way SLI, on the other hand, is listed as compatible. Unfortunately, in our book it should be listed as semi-compatible or something of the sort as its large chipset heatsink got in the way of HR-02, so we had to turn the latter towards the top panel fan. Naturally, in this case you’ll have to rely on the top-panel one, if you have one of course. That didn’t bother our HR-02 too much placed inside HAF X case as it was still pretty efficient.

We’ve shown you initial results scored by the HR-02, but our testbed used an older system based on EVGA’s 780i SLI motherboard (socket 775), which also isn’t fully compatible with the HR-02. We easily fixed the problem by mounting a small passive heatsink with two smaller heatsink (pictures below).

We tried the HR-02 on a few motherboards and in two different computer cases. Most of our testing was performed in Corsair Obsidian 800D case with the rest in CoolerMaster's HAF-X. Both cases were strapped with default fans at maximum RPM and our room temperature was at 22°C. We pushed all the available cores to 100% using Prime 95 (Small FFT) so bear in mind that these results are the worst case scenarios that are very unlikely to occur in practice. In our gaming tests, temperatures on both coolers were about 15°C lower.

We compared the HR-02 with Prolimatech’s Armageddon. Thermalright HR-02 hasn’t managed to beat Armageddon with high margin when we strapped both coolers with fans, but semi-passive mode worked out in HR-02’s favor. The following tests have been performed on EVGA’s X58 FTW3 motherboard in Obsidian 800D case, where Armageddon couldn’t stop our Core i7 930 from going over 100°C. We measured and recorded average temperatures from all the CPU cores.

We managed to score significantly lower temperatures on the CPU cores by strapping our coolers with Thermalright's TR-TY-140mm fan, as you can see for yourself from the table below.

We then overclocked the CPU to 3.6GHz, leaving the fans on the coolers. Overclocking resulted in temperatures over 70°C and Armageddon kept pace with the HR-02, except of course in semi-passive mode.

In our previous tests, we kept the TR-TY 140mm (900-1300RPM) fan running at maximum RPM, but we performed the test with lower RPMs as well. We lowered the aforementioned fan’s RPM from 1300 to inaudible 900RPM, but it barely affected cooling performance. It’s worth noting that TR-TY 140mm fan is capable of 28.3-74CFM airflow.

We also received SilverStone’s SST-AP12 (12cm, 1500RPM) fan with 35.36CFM but while it has proven to be effective, we’d recommend a 140mm (preferably quiet) fan for the HR-02.

We used Gelid’s GC-Extreme thermal paste in our tests, but we couldn’t resist the urge to try the Chill Factor3 paste, which comes with the HR-02. The results are pretty good, almost as good with Gelid’s.

We performed additional HR-02 cooling performance tests in CoolerMaster’s HAF-X, which has more fans than Obsidian 800D. We used EVGA’s 4-Way SLI Classified motherboard, but since the large cooler on the mobo’s chipset got in the way of our cooler, we had to turn the HR-02 towards the case’s top panel fan. We tested it in semi-passive operation on Core i7 Extreme 965, and it’s evident that the top panel fan will dictate much of the HR-02’s performance. In fact, temperatures jumped by more than 20°C when we turned it off.

We also thought it would be interesting to see how Thermalright’s HR-02 performs with older CPUs. We used Intel’s socket 775 motherboard with Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor clocked at 2.9GHz (TDP 75W) and a passively cooled Gigabyte 9800GT. The test system was in CoolerMaster’s HAF X case with 4 fans. Room temperature was at 23-24°C. In order to push our CPU and graphics to the max we used Prime 95 like in the tests before. This time however, we added a bit of graphics torture with FurMark. The in-case fans ran at max RPM but HAF X didn’t mind and didn’t even run that loud. Compared to the two-year old and much cheaper passive Hyper Z600 cooler, Thermalright HR-02 was much more efficient.

Thermalright HR-02 cooler is aimed at high-end users and enthusiasts looking for top cooling performance. If you’re looking for an inaudible cooling solution then HR-02’s semi-passive mode will definitely strike your chord. In fact, by utilizing in-case high airflow, HR-02 will have no trouble cooling the Core i7 965 Extreme. HR-02 is currently priced at about €60, here. This is €10 more than what Prolimatech’s Armageddon goes for here, but these €10 more will provide your with a seriously silent semi-passive cooling of your CPU.

However, Thermalright’s HR-02 is definitely a large cooler and you might want to check for compatibility with your motherboard prior to purchase. If it is indeed compatible, then we have no choice but to recommend it to you as it’s the only CPU cooler that allowed for semi-passive cooling of Core i7 CPUs. Furthermore, it performed like a champ in overclocking when we strapped it with a 140mm fan, which means you’re covered in pretty much any scenario.

Cooler Master, the company that surely needs no introduction, yesterday announced HAF 912 Plus and HAF 912 computer cases, currently the smallest models in HAF series. Size cut is not the only cut in this case though, and the pricing followed suit - HAF 912 vanilla version starts at $59 whereas HAF 912 Plus goes for $79. Cooler Master did a pretty good job in balancing size, cooling, room and pricing, making these interesting choices for those who find larger HAF cases too pricey or simply too large.

HAF stands for High Air Flow and Cooler Master made sure that the cases pack decent airflow, despite the size. HAF 912 Plus comes with two fans – a 200mm front fan with a LED lamp and a 120mm fan on the rear panel. Unlike its “costly” brother, the more affordable HAF 912 comes with a 120mm fan on the front. That’s not all, however, as HAF 912 series offers optional 200mm fan on the top panel, 120/140mm fan on the side panel or room on the top panel for an external radiator for water cooling strapped with two 120mm. Front panels and the PSU are both protected by dust filters.

Although we’re looking at a relatively small case, simple internal reshuffling will allow users to house largest graphics cards such as Radeon HD 5970. All you need to do is take off a piece of 3.5" bracket and we’re talking about a really “big” little case.

Standard configurations of both cases allow for four 5.25 inch drives, six 3.5 inch and two 2.5 inch ones. One 5.25 inch drive bay can quickly become a 3.5’’ inch bay with the provided bracket while 3.5’’-to-2.5’’ bracket allows for additional 2.5’’ drives.

Cable management is something that may even outshine the more expensive HAF cases. There is 16mm of space between the rear panel and the frame and the motherboard tray has enough holes for any cabling you might need. Furthermore, you’ll find plenty of notches for cable management.

The “Plus” in HAF 912 Plus stands for black interior and an e-SATA port on the front I/O panel.

After testing the latest Phenom II X6 CPUs, it's time to check the new underlying chipset, in this case with integrated graphics-core called Radeon 4290.

This is an upgraded 785G still with DX10.1 support, which by now isn't a big deal, and with the UVD2 stream engine. This will allow the 890GX to stream Blu-ray content with picture in picture functionality. They upped the the clock from 500MHz to 700MHz while AMD tweaked the chip to be more energy-efficient. The most important new chip is the Southbridge called SB850. This is the first chipset that includes 6Gbps functionallity, which will come handy when using SSDs. For this review we have skipped this test, but we will test this shortly. Let's take a look at the diagram AMD sent us:

As you can see, it's still pretty straight forward. The 890GX is capable of providing 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes, which results in one x16 and six x1 lanes. The PCIe x16 can be split to two x8 to use two ATI Radeon graphics-cards in Crossfire mode. While the picture states the SB850 has a PATA controller, it's worth noting that board manufacturers use an add-on chip to provide such functionality. We do not really care if such a port is present, because nowadays anything is SATA and optical drives are cheap as chips. The link between IGP and Southbride has been doubled, so 2GB/s is healthy for possible RAID 0 SATA 6Gbps.

While previous boards had troubles in matching exact clocks, both our today's motherboards clock nearly exactly at 200MHz. We tested the new boards with the latest Phenom II X6 processor.

Both boards feature 128MB DDR3 sideport memory clocked at 667MHz; this is what GPU-Z reports when the IGP is idle:

Overclocking:

Unfortunately, our Phenom 1090T managed to scrap MSI's board in our overclocking tests. After receiving a new board we tried without pushing too much voltage, but the result was the same. Luckely we tested before with the 1055T. We reached 3.85GHz with both boards, at 1.4375VCore. We didn't like the fact that MSI's board lacks some overclocking features inside the BIOS but MSI told us "it's not designed to be a high-end board", meaning we won't see such features. The ASRock board does have all features, but lacks the possibility the see SPD values in the memory configuration. The board only remembers the last settings.

Of course both boards support overclocking of the IGP, but the performance is still below anything you would consider playable framerates for quite new games. So we think it's quite useless to do so.

Undervoltaging:

Both boards support undervoltaging of the VCore, memory and IGP. Both boards had no trouble running Phenom II X6 1055T with 1.1750V. Please note that CPUz and Everest report about 1.2160V. So, it seems like X6s CPUs are getting more than they're requesting. Before you consider a system stable, run it about 48h with Prime95. Due to time-constraints we did it only for about eight hours.

3DMark 2003 & 2006:

Of course the 890GX provides only basic graphics functions so only old games will work properly. But with 128MB sideband-memory, Aero in Windows 7 will work smoothly. So just for your information here are the scores for 3DMark2003 and 3DMark2006.

Conclusion:

Both boards performed well. Although MSI's board is a tad faster and also more efficient in idle power usage, ASRock is the better choice. Not only is it a full ATX board, it features even Firewire and also has the better accessory pack. Apart from that, ASRock suprised us with a better VRM design under load. Taking into account that it has more functions, it's nice to see an improvement here. MSI is known for better manufacturing quality, which got rid of the push-pins, but the successor of the 785GM-E65 is disproportionately more expensive while featuring inferior VRM design and just one SATA cable in the box. While the new board gained USB 3.0, it lost Firewire and it's questionable if many users will like to use two graphics-cards on a µATX board, which will render all other slots useless. At a price about €110,- we expected incredible VRM and overclocking options but MSI failed do fulfil our expectations. Of course with a full ATX board, ASRock's board has more options. Generally we would suggest to all manufactures to get rid of the VGA port. A DVI to VGA Adapter would do fine and some more USB 2.0 ports would not hurt either.Of course legacy ports on the board such as COM1, LPT1 and Floppy are nowadays very useless.

The MSI 890GXM-E65 board is on sale for about €109,97 while ASRock 890GX Extreme 3 will set you back €99,44. If you want to spare some bucks you can go for the ASRock 880G Extreme 3 board with a 880G Chipset, which clocks 140MHz slower at 560MHz but has the same feature set and costs just 90,41. Because most 880G boards will only ship with the SB710 Southbridge, take a close look at the specis if you need the 6Gbps SATA feature, otherwise you will be stuck with 3GBps. AMD870 Chipset will offer the same feature-set without the graphics-core and is targeted to the low midrange price-range. This pretty much means you should expect fewer features and worse overclocking options.

ASRock offers the better package and if you're looking for a new board which offers onboard graphics you can't go wrong with our today's sample.

Benchmarks:

Note that the i5-750 does not support onboard GFX, so it's always paired up with an HD4850

Note that the i5-750 does not support onboard GFX, so it's always paired up with an HD4850

Note that the i5-750 does not support onboard GFX, so it's always paired up with an HD4850

Today we’ll finish up our talk on GTX 480 Beast, a card that’s anything but ordinary, which again isn’t a surprise considering that Point of View and TGT teams are behind it. GTX 480 Beast is special for its higher operating clocks, which means better performance as well as higher pricing. GTX 480 Beast card is already famous for its performance and we’re currently looking at the fastest factory-clocked GTX 480 card; GPU runs at 810MHz whereas GDDR5 memory runs at 950MHz (3800MHz effectively). Unfortunately, the price of €661 will definitely make some users reconsider a purchase. Note however that the card comes significantly overclocked, has a water block that will do a world of good for cooling and noise levels and to top it all off, it’s covered by warranty.

Point of View / TGT recently started their overclocking endeavors, and already the Beast series is proudly sitting as the fastest of all GTX 480 cards. Beast moniker is found only on the fastest, crème of the crop cards, whereas the slower ones come with Ultra Charged and Charged monikers. Note that only the GTX 480 Beast comes with a water block – the rest use reference cooling.

GTX 480 card was announced more than six months ago, so Point of View / TGT perhaps comes a bit late. On the other hand, since TGT team is only warming up, we’re anxious to see their future products arriving in time, which was the case with GTX 460 Beast/Ultra Charged/Charged cards.

Point of View / TGT GTX 480 Beast uses Innovatek’s water cooling block – Cool-Matic GTX 480. You can purchase this block separately for €199, and it has been specially designed for cooling GTX 480 cards. Furthermore, Cool-Matic will not only take care of cooling the GPU, but the memory and power circuitry as well. We’ve already heard rumors about Cool-Matic GTX 480, but it appears like Innovatek hesitated because of low demand for GTX 480 water blocks. Fortunately, it seems like orders from Point of View / TGT have remedied that and played a significant role in launching the product.

Cool-Matic GTX 480 cooler has 137 parts (including the screws) and is in direct contact with the PCB at no less than 59 points.

Innovatek uses the new Injektor PRO technology making the water block internals more complex, but in turn providing improved cooling performance. On its own, Cool-Matic GTX 480 costs about €199 although when we first wrote about GTX 480 a few weeks ago, it was listed on Innovatek’s page with a €189 price tag.

GTX 480 Beast is a dual slot card, and the following picture clearly shows that the water block is more than one slot wide.

Just like the reference card, the GTX 480 Beast is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

3DMark Vantage rates the GTX 480 Beast as much as 31% faster than the reference GTX 480. GTX 480 Beast is the fastest single-GPU card and while it's capable of beating the HD 5870 by up to 37%, dual-GPU HD 5970 clearly takes the cake in 3DMark Vantage.

Aliens vs Predator

In this game, GTX 480 Beast outruns the reference GTX 480 by up to 12%. The difference between the GTX 480 Beast and dual-GPU HD 5970 is lower in antialiasing tests and even lower after we pushed the resolution; at 2560x1600 the difference is 12% whereas 1920x1080 results in 16% difference.

Dirt 2

Dirt 2 at 1920x1080 sees the GTX 480 Beast outrun the dual-GPU HD 5970, but the aforementioned card retakes the lead at 2560x1600. Reference GTX 480 is slower than its beastly cousin by 12%.

Metro 2033

This game sees the highest difference between the reference and Beast GTX 480 cards – 16,5%. At 2560x1600, Radeon HD 5870 runs slower than GTX 480 by 58%, whereas the dual-GPU HD 5970 runs on par with GTX 480 Beast.

Tesselation test - Unigine Heaven v2.1

The distinguishing feature of this benchmark is hardware tessellation, a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that games gain drastically detailed and more elaborated look almost free of charge in terms of performance. Tessellation feature REQUIRES both video card with DirectX 11 support and MS Windows Vista/7!

There are three tessellation modes available in this version of the benchmark:

Moderate Mode : This mode is targeted to provide reasonable performance on a wide range of DX11 hardware.

Extreme Mode : It is designed to meet the perspectives of the next series of DX11-capable hardware pushing up the tessellation level to the extreme in the next 1-2 years.Source, unigine.com

Tesselation test - TessMark

TessMark is an OpenGL 4 benchmark. That means you can play with GPU tessellation under Windows XP, Vista and Seven. Of course, you need a GeForce GTX 400 series or a Radeon HD 5000 Series. No GPU tessellation with previous generation of graphics cards!

Like Unigine Heaven, TessMark allows to select the level tessellation. The small difference is that TessMark proposes four differents levels (moderate, normal, extreme and insane), source geeks3d.com / oZone3D.net

FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark for the graphics card. The benchmark offers several options allowing the user to tweak the rendering: fullscreen / windowed mode, MSAA selection, window size, duration.

Increased graphics workload / power draw of FurMark 1.8.0 for all new graphics monsters such as HD 5870, HD 5970 or new GTX 480, leads to less FPS and lower scores compared to FurMark 1.7.0, source oZone3D.net / geeks3D.com

Overclocking, Consumption, Thermals

Of course, many will want to know about GPU temperatures, as this hasn’t quite been the selling point of GTX 480 cards. Our today’s card however, comes with water cooling, which promises to change that. The water cooling system included a PPS Plus 12V Pump (Innovatek / Eheim) and a radiator with three silent Ebm-Papst 4412 F/2GL fans.

Power consumption and performance-per-watt ratio on GTX 480 cards have received more than enough criticism and the following table shows exactly why. It’s perfectly normal and expected for an overclocked GTX 480 Beast to draw more power than the reference GTX 480, although we must admit we’re still hoping that Nvidia’s next generation high end cards will draw less power.

We used default voltages during our testing, which on the GTX 480 Beast’s GPU were at 1100mV.

The following photo shows GPU temperatures during FurMark testing. Note that this is the worst case scenario solely for testing purposes, and you’re not likely to replicate this in everyday work.

The GTX 480 Beast ran stable at 880MHz GPU and 4300MHz memory, and all that without meddling with voltages.

Pushing the voltage to 1125mV did just enough to make the GPU run stable at 895MHz, with GPU temperatures staying at 68°C. 1138mV didn’t change the scenario and not even 1150mV helped the GPU run stable beyond 895MHz.

Conclusion

A few days ago, Point of View / TGT launched the GTX 480 Beast, a card that comes factory overclocked to 810MHz GPU and 950MHz memory (3800MHz effectively). The overclock resulted in up to 14% better performance compared to the reference card, making our today’s test sample the fastest GTX 480 around. The benefits of water cooling and improved performance does not come without a cost though, and and you’ll have to splash out about €661, here. Note that such high pricing is for the most part Innovatek’s “fault”, as their Cool-Matic GTX 480 block costs €199 when purchased separately.

The GTX 480 is already known for its high consumption and pretty high noise levels, and while GTX 480 Beast will solve the noise and thermals, the consumption is naturally even higher. Whether this is the perfect card for you is naturally not ours to say. What we can tell you, though, is that the GTX 480 is currently the fastest single-GPU card around, which means that it will take anything you throw at it in stride, regardless of whether it’s demanding games or PhysX and CUDA apps.

Geforce GTX 460 is currently pretty popular so many Nvidia partners are trying to lure customers with nonreference designs, factory overclocks or gifts. Today we’re talking about EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW (For The Win) card that sits among the fastest factory overclocked GTX 460 cards. The GTX 460 FTW’s GPU was pushed from reference 675MHz to 850MHz, with the memory also getting a boost from 900MHz to 1000MHz. Factory overclock usually provides improved performance but of course, this comes at a price.

All the GTX 460 cards we’ve tested so far (regardless of the company or operating clocks) had no trouble running at 800+MHz, which says enough of the GF104’s overclocking potential. Those who dare not risk their warranty or doubt that they’ll manage to hit 850MHz for the GPU can thankfully resort to factory overclocked cards such as EVGA GTX 460 FTW.

GF104 is derived from Fermi architecture so no worries about DirectX 11 support. Unlike the GF100 (GTX480/470/465), the GF104 packs less transistors and runs cooler. GTX 460 will allow for pleasant gaming at 1920x1080 and its main red-team competitor is the HD 5850, although EVGA GTX 460 FTW comes pretty close to HD 5870’s scores. Bear in mind though that AMD will soon announce its HD 6800 series, which doesn’t make the GTX 460’s task of proving itself any easier.

Before we move on, not that Nvidia offers two versions of GTX 460 cards – one with 768MB and the other with 1024MB of GDDR5 memory. However, it’s not only the frame buffer that is different and it ultimately affects performance so the GTX 460 768MB is a bit slower. Furthermore, the 768MB version of GTX 460 cards come with 192-bit memory bus, whereas the 1024MB versin comes with a 256-bit bus. This directly affects ROP units as well, so the 1024MB version of the card comes with 32 ROPs whereas the 768MB version comes with 24. Clocks for the GPU and memory are identical on both cards.

We recieved the card in EVGA's typical packaging. In the box we found a mini-HDMI-to-HDMI cable (about 2m in length), VGA converter, software CD, a large „EVGA Geforce GTX 400 GPUs“ sticker and a small „Powered by EVGA“ sticker.

The card comes with reference dual-slot cooling which does a good job cooling the GF104.

In the center of the cooler is a fan with 11 fins, with the aluminum heatsink and copper heatpipe visible underneath the fan. The fan RPM is controlled via the card's BIOS but we're pretty confident that many users will leave it as it is since the fan is pretty quiet.

EVGA GTX 460 FTW comes with reference set of video outs – two dual-link DVIs and one mini-HDMI out.

Like the reference card, EVGA's GTX 460 FTW requires two 6-pin power connectors.

We already said that this is a reference design, but there is one little difference – passive, black mosfet heatsink, which can be seen on the picture below.EVGA's GTX 460 FTW 1GB is 2-Way SLI ready as it comes with one SLI connector.

EVGA GTX 460 FTW is a factory overclocked graphics card running at 850MHz for the GPU and 1000MHz (4000MHz effectively) for the memory.

Our attempt at additional overclocking without messing with voltages and manual RPM control resulted in 860MHz for the GPU, whereas maximum fan RPM allowed for 870MHz.

After increasing the voltage from 1000mV to 1087mV (fan at AUTO settings) we managed to hit 900MHz, which was good enough for gaming but not FurMark. For the latter test, we had to push the fan to the max.

The highest memory clock we managed was 1040MHz, which is 40MHz (160MHz effectively) higher than the factory overclock. We’re talking about Samsung’s K4G10325FE-HC05 GDDR5 – the same one we managed to push up to 1090MHz in our EVGA GTS 450 FPB review.

Overclocking to 900MHz/4160MHz further improved the results by 4% in Metro 2033 and almost 5% in AvP, as you can see from the following table.

Thermals, Noise

EVGA GTX 460 FTW features the same reference dual slot cooler we find on GTX 460 cards with the exception of a small passive VRM heatsink. The fan’s AUTO operation is pretty balanced so the card will be inaudible in 2D and will not be loud during gaming. FurMark is of course another story and while the card could be heard, we can’t say it was too loud. Naturally, if you push the fan to the max, you’ll probably find it too loud.

After our overclocking to 900MHz (fan at maximum RPM) we measured 74°C in FurMark. We tried leaving the fan at AUTO RPM mode but the card refused to run stable and the temperatures we measured were at 84°C.

Consumption

Conclusion

EVGA GTX 460 FTW 1GB is one of the fastest GTX 460 cards around and comes with a 2 year warranty (more on that here). EVGA’s GTX 460 FTW is great for gaming at resolutions such as 1920x1080, and it isn’t too pricey either. This card will set you back about €206 whereas the same company's reference GTX 460 1024MB (675MHz GPU, 900MHz memory) is priced at about €181.

It’s well worth noting that the difference in pricing is at about 14%, here, whereas the performance difference is up to 22%. Although the card comes with reference cooling, we must admit we’ve had no trouble whatsoever – this time around Nvidia seems to have done a good job.

If you prefer the green team and are looking for a DirectX 11 card to satisfy your DX11 gaming urge, the GTX 460 is a good choice. EVGA’s GTX 460 1GB FTW, on the other hand, is an even better choice considering the added performance and you definitely won’t go wrong if it ends up in your arsenal. On the other hand, AMD will soon launch its new cards so it might be wise to wait a bit more, if not for the cards in GTX 460’s range, then for the price cuts that are likely to follow the launch.

Our today’s guest is Gainward‘s Goes Like Hell model, a factory overclocked version of GTS 450. The reference card, as you may recall, runs at 783MHz for the GPU and 902MHz (3608MHz effectively) for the memory. Gainward GTS 450 GLH 1GB, on the other hand, comes with a 930MHz GPU and 1000MHz memory (4000MHz effectively). With such high operating clocks, Gainward GTS 450 GLH is already among the two fastest GTS 450 cards around.

Nvidia aimed Geforce GTS 450 cards at gamers with limited budgets, but the card’s initial pricing was a bit too high (around €129). Luckily for customers, the pricing is much more realistic and you can buy a GTS 450 for about €100. Currently the lowest priced GTS 450 comes exactly from Gainward and is priced at about €100, here. GTS 450 GLH, on the other hand, will set you back about €117, here.

We must admit that the GTS 450 would’ve had a much easier job if it had launched a few months ago, because many users are waiting to see what AMD’s upcoming 6xxx series brings. Furthermore, with the card’s price hanging around €100, they stand little chance of outdoing AMD’s offer. In fact the GTS 450’s main competitor is Radeon HD 5770, which is one year old. The GTS 450 arrived to replace the 9800 GTX+ (a.k.a. GTS 250).

GTS 450 packs some pretty promising performance for gamers who use resolutions from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050. Of course, we can’t forget 3D Vision, SLI and True-HD audio bitstreaming support.

The card has 192 shader processors, 16 ROPs, 32 texture units, two 64-bit memory controllers (128 bit interface) and 1GB of GDDR5. As far as consumption goes, the reference card will draw up to 106W.

Gainward’s GOOD design is notable for “QuattroPorts” – a wide assortment of vide outs and in-house cooling. So, the GTS 450 GLH comes with HDMI, two dual-link DVIs and VGA outs. Note that most reference cards come with two dual-link DVIs and mini-HDMI.

Gainward decided on “QuattroPorts” design, meaning the card comes with four video outs – two dual link DVIs, one VGA and one HDMI out. The SLI connector means you can chain up to two cards in two-way SLI. The card is powered via one 6-pin power connector. In the box you’ll get the user’s manual, driver CD and one 2x molex-to-6-pin PCIe adapter.

Most GTS 450 cards can be overclocked higher than 900MHz, and we’ve seen that some partners like Gainward dared to push it beyond 920MHz and back it up with a warranty. More precisely, the GTS 450 GLH runs at 930MHz for the GPU with the memory running at 1000MHz (4000MHz effectively).

Our GLH is already overclocked, so we didn’t manage much more. It took a voltage boost to 1162mV to get stable 950MHz for the GPU with the memory running at 1040MHz (4160MHz effectively). We left the fan in AUTO mode and it wasn’t very loud. It’s well worth noting that nothing we did to the fan managed to help with further overclocking.

Thermals

GTS 450 GLH didn’t go over 74°C during our tests. The cooler was almost inaudible in idle operation and while it gets louder in FurMark tests, it isn’t too loud. Of course, fan speed can be controlled via ExperTool.

Consumption

We measured our entire rig's consumption after stressing the graphics with FurMark. Consumption shows that the GTS 450 can easily compete with Radeon HD 5700 cards in this respect – it consumes less than Radeon HD 5770 in idle mode but consumes more than the aforementioned card when running GPU-intensive apps. Gainward's GTS 450 GLH comes with a factory overclock of 18.8% and so it consumes up to 40W more than the reference card.

Gainward offers three GTS 450 cards and all three of these are special for its video outs configuration that Gainward calls “QuattroPorts”. This facet of Gainward’s design is dubbed “GOOD” by the company. The card comes with HDMI, two dual-link DVIs and VGA outs whereas the cooling is Gainward’s dual-slot, nonreference solution.

Gainward squeezed the maximum from GTS 450, with its GLH card offering up to 19% better performance compared to reference cards. Gainward GTS 450 GLH is priced at about €117, here, which unfortunately makes it pricier than most HD 5770 cards – its direct competitors.

All in all, Gainward’s GOOD design has proven to be efficient with GTS 450 cards. The performance boost provided by Gainward’s overclock is pretty nice and definitely gives GTS 450 GLH the edge over its reference counterpart, but everything points to the fact that Nvidia has not yet come up with a HD 5770-killer.

This card will be your faithful companion if your resolutions of choice are up to 1680x1050. If you’re an Nvidian in the market for a new card and have decided to purchase a GTS 450 card, then there’s no reason why Gainward’s GTS 450 GLH shouldn’t be on your list, well ahead of the reference solution of course.